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Friday, November 27, 2009

17 Again – Part 2

The first impression, that warm feeling of being home again, lasted just a few seconds. It’s that that house of mine, my secondary school, was in a terrible shape! It was dirty, dishevelled, with its walls full of graffiti and kids walking around, sitting on the stairs or just lying on the floor talking, when they were supposed to be in class. A little disoriented, I look for a Security guy and explain to him that I was a former student, from 24 years before, and that I wanted to walk around and take some pictures to take to Canada as a souvenir.

To my surprise, not only they didn’t have any issues with that (go and try to pull the same stunt in an American school!) but they also told me how to find the Graduates office, where I was very nicely welcomed by a kind lady who not only took my personal info to update the registries, but also gave me a pin with the school logo and then took me for a walk around.

I remembered everything. The classrooms, the playgrounds (one inside and the other one outdoors), the Aula Magna, those big marble steps that would take you to a hall where the statue of former president Carlos Pellegrini was, the Physics and Chemistry labs, the library, etc. I was surprised that in this case I did seem to remember everything, unlike my primary school; my memories were much more fresh in this case. But while my school in Necochea looked as good as it did 30 years ago, seeing the “Pelle” in such a bad shape made me really sad.

The Chemistry Lab – El laboratorio de Química

The walls in the classrooms were full of slogans and random writing, same as the benches, that were all over the place. Walking around the halls, I could hear more noise coming out of the classrooms than from the kids that were walking around me. I saw more than on professor making an effort to communicate while everybody around them were talking or just amalgamated with their cellphones…

I went to my First Year (Grade 8) room, then Fourth, Fifth and Sixth (Grades 11, 12 and 13). I had the same thought in every case: “This place is falling apart, what the hell happened here?” As I was walking down those majestic stairs on my way to the patio and Quique’s buffet, where I had had lunch so many times before, the number of panflets with propaganda from political parties piqued my attention. I couldn’t help but ask:

- So they still choose the members of the Students Centre through Political Parties?

- Yes

- But... then who takes care of the school’s problems? And what if we have a brilliant student that happens to be affiliated to one of the very small parties we have here? He will never make it!

- ...

That’s when I remembered that that had been the reason for me to leave the Centre, back in 1983/84. I would go to the meetings and listen stupefied while fifteen year-olds were talking about not paying the Foreign Debt and making plans to go to Nicaragua to harvest coffee; I would never hear anything about what to do with the problems we were having with our curriculum due to some impending changes in the acceptance tests for the Universities, or even about going to the Province of Chaco to harvest cotton instead of travelling so far away. Well, at least that hadn’t changed in all those years.

I went across the schoolyard, and I couldn’t remember what colour the walls used to be. Quique’s buffet, my favourite place, was still there, but there were no signs of him. "The buffet has been taken by the students”, I was told; "Quique has his own little restaurant around this neighbourhood”. What do you mean “taken by the students”? We have minors running a business there, making money by selling burgers and Coke at school, at a place they have occupied by force? Where’s that money going? Nobody says or does anything? I realized these were all rhetorical questions, so I decide to shut my trap and keep walking.

Before I left, I met a former schoolmate and an employee I knew that was still there after all these years. They both described my school’s reality to me. Back in 1980, about 1,500 or more kids would register to take the acceptance tests, and only about 450 of them would make it. "Now we almost have to go outside and recruit kids that are walking by, begging them to come study here”, they said with a mix of resignation and sadness.

The last place I visited was the Aula Magna, where I had performed so many times before (either singing or acting). That place, luckily, looked exactly the same. Right next to the door I saw a piano, and on top of it many sheets with the lyrics of a song written by Chilean author Violeta Parra that seemed very appropriate: “17 again”. I wish I had been 17 at that moment, so I could pick some fights…

I said my good-byes and I left. I walked and walked, very sad. I still cannot believe what has become of an institution that for decades has been considered among the most prestigious of the country. You walk in and tour around and it’s hard to believe that somebody actually studies in there. I don’t think it must be much different than what you could see at other schools… What can I do about it, living over 10,000 km away? Not much, just be sad and hope that the current board, the students and the graduates can one day put the “Carlos Pellegrini” back in the place it so deserves.

A side thought: evidently, the education plan of the last few government (along with the current) is going better than ever. An illiterate crowd is much easier to fool… I mean govern.